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Father and Son

Edmund Gosse

3.73 · Rating details · 845 ratings · 101 reviews

"This book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences, and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in disruption. Of the two being here described, one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward..." Thus begins this remarkable chronicle of the division between generations. Goose was born in 1849 into a deeply ...more

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Paperback, Oxford World’s Classics, 304 pages

Published November 18th 2004 by Oxford University Press (first published 1907)

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Jul 01, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, british-isles, religion, autobiography-memoir

I was recommended to read this along with The Way of All Flesh by a history teacher back at school(view spoiler), both are intrinsically Victorian books, with family and the Patriarch in the centre by the right hand side I was recommended to read this along with The Way of All Flesh by a history teacher back at school(view spoiler), both are intrinsically Victorian books, with family and the Patriarch in the centre by the right hand side of GOD almighty, at the same time both are subversive, rebellious works. The Victorian corset in these books is too tight crushing the internal life of the central figures, the collar doesn't just chafe, but cuts the throat. Butler's book is fiction, Edmund Gosse's an autobiography.

Edmund Gosse's account of his childhood with it's particular focus on his relationship with his father Philip Henry Gosse is really a remarkable read, particularly if all Victorians are in your eyes indistinguishable on account of their starchiness.

Philip Gosse was the man who devised the theory that God created the world with all the appearances of being old as a way of reconciling his belief in the literal truth of the Bible and his work in the emerging natural sciences, he came up with this theory in an honest attempt to reconcile his love for the wonders of the natural world, the new science and his painfully literal belief in the word for word, if not comma for comma absolute truth of the Bible (view spoiler). He was a naturalist who illustrated his own works in watercolours. However after the death of his first wife from cancer he moved permanently to a community of Plymouth Brethren in Devon.

Edmund Gosse's memoir traces how as he grew up had an increasing desire to widen his outlook which ground against the Weltanschauung of his father causing the two conflict and ongoing unhappiness. To an extent Gosse the elder brought on the division between himself and his son in that he didn't want to send him to be schooled with other children of the Plymouth Brethren but to learn Latin and have an education more appropriate to a Victorian gentleman. Latin in a twist on its mythical Trojan roots was in itself a Trojan horse as even its grammar opened, courtesy of the Vocative case, the possibilities of non-Christian belief and Gosse the younger duly inspired does try to worship a chair. This has peculiar importance as the younger Gosse notices that the famously jealous God does not strike him down, render him neither lame nor leprous, and there isn't so much as a thunderous rumble in the sky.

ThePlymouth Brethren rather delight in their extreme inwardness and refusal to honour anything outside of the Bible, but as the younger Gosse grows, the firmer the spirit of Virgil guides the growing man, despite many difficult and painful circles out into the relative sunshine of London literary life - in which young women are not regarded as heroes for using their umbrellas to damage plaster casts of antique statutes.

A moving and often sad work, perhaps all the sadder because this account of their mutual unhappiness is the lasting memorial to two figures who were reasonably well known public figures within their own life times, I suppose given the curious continuation of such intense religious communities that similar memoirs will continue to be written, this one I hope retains through its message of the redemptive salvation possible through literature something particular to say.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Aug 01, 2010 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: english, autobiography

This book was right up my alley in that my upbringing paralleled the author's - in spite of being over a century later. Like him, I was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren which, in 1960s-70s New Zealand, as in 1850s-60s England, meant a fixation on literalism, a consequent dryness and lack of imagination, and an almost disdainful rejection of "the world," which to a kid in particular was a blanket term for "everything fun." Seeing this aspect of my childhood before me in a form as dispassionate ...more

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Nov 03, 2017 Nigeyb rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Another book I discovered through listening to the wonderful Backlisted podcast. Edmund Gosse (21 September 1849 – 16 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith.

Father and Son is his account of his childhood and his gradual questioning of the fundamentalist religion of his parents. All of which might make this book sound like a misery memoir, and yet nothing could be furth ...more

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Jul 20, 2017 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biographical, victorian-studies, reviewed-for-blog, memoirs, obscure-classics

(4.5) I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get to this splendid evocation of 1850s–60s family life in an extreme religious sect. I’d known about Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907) for ages, and even owned a copy. Two of its early incidents – the son’s anticlimactic birth announcement in the father’s diary, and the throwing out of a forbidden Christmas pudding – were famously appropriated by Peter Carey for creating Oscar’s backstory in his Booker Prize-winning novel Oscar and Lucinda (198 (4.5) I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get to this splendid evocation of 1850s–60s family life in an extreme religious sect. I’d known about Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907) for ages, and even owned a copy. Two of its early incidents – the son’s anticlimactic birth announcement in the father’s diary, and the throwing out of a forbidden Christmas pudding – were famously appropriated by Peter Carey for creating Oscar’s backstory in his Booker Prize-winning novel Oscar and Lucinda (1988), which I read in 2008 but didn’t much like. I was reminded of that literary debt when I worked for King’s College London’s library system and did a summer placement in the Special Collections department in 2011. For my “In the Spotlight” article about a book in particular need of conservation, I chose Philip Henry Gosse’s Omphalos, his well-meaning but half-baked contribution to the Victorian science versus religion debate, and did a lot of secondary reading about the Gosses and their milieu.

The book’s subtitle, “A Study of Two Temperaments,” gives an idea of the angle Gosse takes here: this is not a straightforward biography (after all, he’d already written his father’s life story in 1890) or a comprehensive memoir, but a snapshot of his early years and an emotional unpicking of the personality clash that results from fundamentally different approaches to life. While Gosse père (1810–88) was a devoted naturalist as well as a dogged believer in the literal truth of the Bible, even in adolescence his son (1849–1928) was a literature aficionado and troubled skeptic. Philip Gosse was a minister with the Plymouth Brethren and married late, at 38; his wife was 42, very late for contemplating motherhood in those days. Like Thomas Hardy, the infant Edmund was presumed dead at birth and set aside, so it’s thanks to keen-eyed nurses that we have these two late Victorians’ significant literary output today.

Although his first word was “book” and he could read by age four, Edmund was initially forbidden to read fiction. His mother quashed her own love of making up stories because she believed fiction was in some way sinful. It was always taken for granted that Edmund would follow his father into the ministry, and early on he had a sense of a split self: the external persona he put on to please his parents, and the deeper self that struggled to divine its purpose. He would cheekily test the limits of his familial faith by petitioning the Almighty for an expensive toy that he ‘needed’ and praying to a wooden chair to see if he’d be struck down for idolatry. The absurdity of such scenes is a welcome foil to the sadness of his mother’s death when Gosse was just seven. A year later the boy and his father moved from London to Devon, where both were captivated by the sea. (Indeed, if Philip Gosse is remembered as a natural historian today, it’s largely for his work on marine life – he discovered a new genus of sea anemones in 1859.) After Philip remarried, Edmund began attending a weekday boarding school and fell in love with literature, especially Shakespeare and the Romantic poets.

There’s a stretch of the book at about the two-thirds point that I found less compelling; much of it describes the other members of his father’s congregation (“the saints”) and the tedium of Sundays. It’s also a shame there isn’t a brief afterword that continues the story through to his father’s death. But for much of its length this is a riveting investigation of how the conflict between reason and religion plays out both within individual souls and between family members. The purpose here is to chart the course that led him out of religion and made the supernatural rift between him and his father permanent by the time he was 15 or so, and Gosse fulfills that aim admirably. In doing so he maintains a delicately balanced tone: Although he vividly recreates funny moments from his childhood, he also makes clear-eyed, scathing assessments of a religion that is ostensibly based on love but all too often veers towards judgment instead:

Here was perfect purity, perfect intrepidity, perfect abnegation; yet here was also narrowness, isolation, an absence of perspective, let it be boldly admitted, an absence of humanity. And there was a curious mixture of humbleness and arrogance; entire resignation to the will of God and not less entire disdain of the judgment and opinion of God.

[H]e allowed the turbid volume of superstition to drown the delicate stream of reason.

He who was so tender-hearted that he could not bear to witness the pain or distress of any person, however disagreeable or undeserving, was quite acquiescent in believing that God would punish human beings, in millions, for ever, for a purely intellectual error of comprehension.

Even so, this is a loving portrait, as well as a nuanced one, and a model of how to write family memoir. I enjoyed it immensely, and will no doubt read it again.

Further reading:

Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse 1810–1888 by Ann Thwaite

In the Days of Rain, Rebecca Stott’s memoir of growing up in the Plymouth Brethren in the 1960s

Originally published with images on my blog, Bookish Beck. ...more

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Jul 29, 2017 Michael Perkins rated it really liked it

While literary eggheads like to debate whether the writer, the son in the title, Edmund, is being fair to his father, Philip, or not, the reality is that, for good or ill, our parents have a profound effect on us. It lasts a lifetime, even if we are not always conscious of it.

This is the son’s account, during the Victorian Era, of his parents and the life he had with his father after his mother died. He makes it clear he is not trying to write a biography. These are his impressions and memories, While literary eggheads like to debate whether the writer, the son in the title, Edmund, is being fair to his father, Philip, or not, the reality is that, for good or ill, our parents have a profound effect on us. It lasts a lifetime, even if we are not always conscious of it.

This is the son’s account, during the Victorian Era, of his parents and the life he had with his father after his mother died. He makes it clear he is not trying to write a biography. These are his impressions and memories, to which he’s entitled.

This particular edition I bought, besides having a rather bad introduction, that should be skipped, also left off the author’s all-important subtitle: “A Study of Two Temperaments” which offers immediate insight into the perspective the reader will get in this story.

First of all, the author is quite critical of himself as a child. He is not setting himself as some kind of paragon in contrast to his parents or even a victim. In fact, he is quite affectionate toward his parents in this memoir. Secondly, the loss of his mother, to very painful breast cancer, was a huge blow to both the author and his father, that neither seemed to recover from.

His parents were Biblical literalists and members of a very strict Christian fundamentalist sect, The Plymouth Brethren (the progenitor of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S, including the elaborate apocalyptic schemes). His mother was a natural storyteller, which no doubt was useful in her evangelistic efforts but, as a child, she was scolded by her Calvinist nursemaid, who explained that all stories and fiction were in fact lies and, therefore, a sin. So there were to be no storybooks in the author’s house as a child, adding to his grey existence.

His father was an enthusiastic amateur naturalist and zoologist, who popularized the indoor aquarium, and who belonged to the British Museum and the Royal Society until he left London, with his son, for seaside Devon. He had been well connected in scientific circles.

The trouble for the father began, however, when Charles Lyell published his “Principles of Geology” (1830–1833) that delineated geologic change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time. Philip's problem became more severe when Darwin developed his theory “The Origin of Species.” A friend of Darwin, Gosse got to read it well before it was published in 1859.

Philip immediately saw these ideas as a threat to the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, as well as the entire Bible. He concocted a strange scheme, which he called Omphalos (which reflected his belief that both Adam and Eve were created with navels), which in some fundamentalist circles today is referred to as “mature creation.”

No one was accepting of this scheme, neither his fellow scientists or Christians. Darwin stayed silent, but others were free with their mockery. Between the loss of his wife and this humiliation, Philip became quite melancholic, which cast a cloud over his son’s life.

This is a book roughly in the genre of “The Way of All Flesh,” by Samuel Butler and “Eminent Victorians,” by Lytton Strachey.

Here is more detail on Philip’s fantastical creationist theory….

https://www.wired.com/2009/11/p-h-gos... ...more

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Aug 16, 2020 John rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

An account of Edmund Gosse’s journey from childhood to adulthood and his struggle with his conscience being brought up by his father Philip a Plymouth Brethren. It is a chronicle of religious fanaticism in the Victorian era in the 1860s.

The death of his mother when he was a child created a vacuum and his father became more fanatical in indoctrination of his son into his religious beliefs. The strange thing I found was his fathers his occupation as a marine zoologist and his struggle to reject D ...more

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Nov 24, 2011 Scott Harris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

And he said we must judge not, lest we ourselves bejudged. I had just enough tact to let that pass, but I was quite aware that our whole system was one of judging, and that we had no intention whatever of being judged ourselves. Yet even at the age of eleven one sees that on certain occasions to press home the truth is not convenient.

The dripping sarcasm of the line above is an apt characterization of this delightful memoir of the relationship between poet Edmund Gosse and his father Philip. Alt ...more

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Oct 27, 2008 Dave rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One of the best books about intellectual freedom that I have ever read. Gosse manages to make his father a deeply sympathetic and tragically sad character (and himself a real, selfish, immature boy) while clearly showing how oppressive and ridiculous puritanism can be. When young Edmund discovers Dickens and Shakespeare it's like coming up for air after deep submersion. ...more

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Oct 17, 2016 John Anthony rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Edited by Peter Abbs

Gosse's Life and Works and Chronology

Introduction

FATHER AND SON

Notes

Select Bibliography

Published 1907

Father = Philip Gosse, Marine Zoologist and Plymouth Brother. If he was living today we'd probably label him a Christian Fundamentalist (and even a child abuser). Edmund Gosse, an only child, was brought up in an erstwhile loving home whilst required to wear a religious straitjacket and undergo constant 'spiritual' interrogation. That he remained sane, managed to “escape” and Edited by Peter Abbs

Gosse's Life and Works and Chronology

Introduction

FATHER AND SON

Notes

Select Bibliography

Published 1907

Father = Philip Gosse, Marine Zoologist and Plymouth Brother. If he was living today we'd probably label him a Christian Fundamentalist (and even a child abuser). Edmund Gosse, an only child, was brought up in an erstwhile loving home whilst required to wear a religious straitjacket and undergo constant 'spiritual' interrogation. That he remained sane, managed to “escape” and develop in a contrary direction to his father, becoming a poet, writer, biographer, literary critic and academic is extraordinary.

Father and Son is his most popular work, probably the only one now in print. I found it a slog much of the time though and his wordy style didn't help. That said, there are some very memorable passages throughout the book. Writing of one of the 'saints', as the individuals forming the congregation of Plymouth Bretheren, presided over by Philip Gosse, their preacher, are referred to:

“I do not know exactly what she (Mrs Paget) wanted my father to do with me; perhaps she did not know herself; she was meddlesome, ignorant and fanatical, and she liked to fancy that she was exercising influence. But the wonderful, the inexplicable thing is that my Father, - who with all his limitations was so distinguished and high minded, - should listen to her for a moment, and still more wonderful is it that he really allowed her, grim vixen that she was, to disturb his plans and retard his purposes. ….My Father found himself brought face to face at last, not with a disciple, but with a trained expert in his own peculiar scheme of religion. At every point she was armed with arguments the source of which he knew and the validity of which he recognised. He trembled before Mrs Paget as a man in a dream may tremble before a parody of his own central self, and he could not blame her without laying himself open somewhere to censure.

But my stepmother's instincts were more primitive and her actions less wire-drawn than my Father's. She disliked Mrs Paget as much as one earnest believer can bring herself to dislike a sister in the Lord. My stepmother had quietly devoted herself to what she thought the best way of bringing me up, and she did not propose now to be thwarted by the wife of a lunatic Baptist”.

Interesting but scary portrayal of this 19th century childhood, helped me put into perspective my own childhood. Perhaps it wasn't so bad after all!
...more

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Sep 17, 2014 Bettie rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: BBC Radio Listeners

Shelves: classic, newtome-author, radio-4x, victorian, nonfiction, christian, autumn-2014, religion, autobiography-memoir, published-1907

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 11, 2015 Victoria Lie added it

Shelves: fiction, books-i-own, favorites

I don't know if I liked this book so much because it is good or simply because its theme is of such importance to me. Edmund Gosse writes about his upbringing in a deeply religious home, and the consequences it has for the relationship he has with his father. It is a powerful and sad exploration of a desolate childhood, limited by unbearable constraints and expectations in the name of the Holy.

It is impossible for me to talk about this book without trailing off with my own thoughts on faith and I don't know if I liked this book so much because it is good or simply because its theme is of such importance to me. Edmund Gosse writes about his upbringing in a deeply religious home, and the consequences it has for the relationship he has with his father. It is a powerful and sad exploration of a desolate childhood, limited by unbearable constraints and expectations in the name of the Holy.

It is impossible for me to talk about this book without trailing off with my own thoughts on faith and upbringing, so instead I want to share some passages that struck me, either for their poignancy, or their sheer power:

"And he said we must judge not, lest we ourselves be judged. I had enough tact to let that pass, but I was quite aware that our whole system was one of judging, and that we had no intention whatever of being judged ourselves."

"My little faults of conduct, too, assumed shapes of terrible importance, since they proceeded from one so signally enlightened. My father was never tired of reminding me that, now that I was a professing Christian, I must remember, in everything I did, that I was an example to others. "

"He who was so tender-hearted that he could not bear to witness the pain or distress of any person, however disagreeable or undeserving, was quite acquiescent in believing that God would punish human beings, in millions, for ever, for a purely intellectual error of comprehension."

And the most beautifully passionate of them all:

"Let me speak plainly. After my long experience, after my patience and forbearance, I have surely the right to protest against the untruth (would that I could apply to it any other word!) that evangelical religion, or any religion in violent form, is wholesome or valuable or desirable adjunct to human life. It divides the heart from heart. It sets up a vain, chimerical ideal, in the barren pursuit of which all tender, indulgent affections, all the genial play of life, all the exquisite pleasures and soft resignations of the body, all that enlarges and calms the soul, are exchanged for what is harsh and void and negative. It encourages a stern and ignorant spirit of condemnations; it throws altogether out of gear the healthy movement of the conscience; it invents virtues which are sterile and cruel; it invents sins which are no sins at all, but which darken the heaven of innocent joy with futile clouds of remorse." ...more

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Mar 08, 2008 Dr. Carl Ludwig Dorsch rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lives

Published anonymously in 1907, when Gosse was 58, "Father and Son" recounts his childhood among the Plymouth Brethren, centering largely, after his mother's early death, on his relation with pere Philip Henry Gosse, English naturalist and author of "Omphalos: an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot," in which is formulated what has come to be known as the 'omphalos hypothesis,' reconciling the fossil record to revelation by supposing it too to having been created ex nihilo.

(Though it should be
Published anonymously in 1907, when Gosse was 58, "Father and Son" recounts his childhood among the Plymouth Brethren, centering largely, after his mother's early death, on his relation with pere Philip Henry Gosse, English naturalist and author of "Omphalos: an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot," in which is formulated what has come to be known as the 'omphalos hypothesis,' reconciling the fossil record to revelation by supposing it too to having been created ex nihilo.

(Though it should be remembered that, as even Russell once evidently put it, "...there is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that 'remembered' a wholly unreal past".)

Philip Henry Gosse's "Omphalos" was published in 1857 (two years prior to "Origin of Species"), when Edmund was 8 years old. Edmund writes:

"In the course of that dismal winter, as the post began to bring in private letters, few and chilly, and public reviews, many and scornful, my Father looked in vain for the approval of the churches, and in vain for the acquiescence of the scientific societies, and in vain for the gratitude of those 'thousands of thinking persons', which he had rashly assured himself of receiving. As his reconciliation of Scripture statements and geological deductions was welcomed nowhere, as Darwin continued silent, and the youthful Huxley was scornful, and even Charles Kingsley, from whom my Father had expected the most instant appreciation, wrote that he could not 'give up the painful and slow conclusion of five and twenty years' study of geology, and believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie',--as all this happened or failed to happen, a gloom, cold and dismal, descended upon our morning teacups. It was what the poets mean by an 'inspissated' gloom; it thickened day by day, as hope and self-confidence evaporated in thin clouds of disappointment. My Father was not prepared for such a fate. He had been the spoiled darling of the public, the constant favourite of the press, and now, like the dark angels of old,

so huge a rout
Encumbered him with ruin.

He could not recover from amazement at having offended everybody by an enterprise which had been undertaken in the cause of universal reconciliation."

"Father and Son" is offered, as Gosse notes in his Preface, as "...a document, as a record of educational and religious conditions which, having passed away, will never return. In this respect, as the diagnosis of a dying Puritanism, it is hoped that the narrative will not be altogether without significance."

A hundred years on we see still how slowly the landscape changes (thus far at least) and how the terrors and wonders suffusing Gosse’s world suffuse it yet.

Full "Father and Son" text available at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2540/2... ...more

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Sep 10, 2008 Wayne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: re-reads, religion, memoirs-biography, english-classic-lit

When I was offered the Opportunity to go to Adelaide University to study Two Subjects in the Arts of
My Own Choice, I should have JUMPED at it; but unfortunately, as far as I was concerned, it meant
NOT doing my Second Year of Philosophy, a subject I was absolutely WRAPPED IN. I mentioned My Dilemma in a letter to my Auntie Rosie. She settled it with her: "Whenever Opportunity knocks, TAKE IT!!!" I didn't know then that she had made a decision between marrying her current Sydney Beau and a Man-On-

When I was offered the Opportunity to go to Adelaide University to study Two Subjects in the Arts of
My Own Choice, I should have JUMPED at it; but unfortunately, as far as I was concerned, it meant
NOT doing my Second Year of Philosophy, a subject I was absolutely WRAPPED IN. I mentioned My Dilemma in a letter to my Auntie Rosie. She settled it with her: "Whenever Opportunity knocks, TAKE IT!!!" I didn't know then that she had made a decision between marrying her current Sydney Beau and a Man-On-The-Land. Being a Social Climber she had taken the Man-On-The-Land and saw her Ex- whenever she came to Sydney!!

So I went to Adelaide Uni to study English Lit. and History.

Unfortunately or Not, the Reformation History I chose to Take, too soon had me discovering that I was Firmly on the side of Martin Luther in his dispute with the Catholic Church; and in English Lit. I was to read a book I never knew existed - "Father and Son" by Edmund Gosse, a true tale of how a young boy's Faith was gradually eroded by his Father's strict adherence to the Plymouth Brethren.
As I was studying to be a Priest, and in My Philosophy Studies, having already been swept away by the line: "The Gods don't create Mankind. It is Mankind who creates his Gods."- this Double Dose I was taking at Adelaide University was certainly stirring the embers, my embers!!!

When I enrolled at Sydney University some years later as an atheist, this time to continue with my Beloved Philosophy and with the History and English still in tow, I added Biblical Studies as well.
This latter was run by Radical Believers, such as Barbara Thiring, who became intent on ALWAYS reading out my essays. The course was fairly close to my Biblical Studies in the Monastery.
So I easily topped the Bib. Studies Class here, along with being in the first Ten places in the Philosophy.
During our Philosophy Lectures, the lecturer was getting a bit pissed off, when he suddenly declared "Who has read Edmund Gosse's "Father and Son?" I shot up my hand, to suddenly find it was a very Lone Hand !!! The lecturer glared round and then made another declaration.:
"Thank God there is SOMEONE here WHO IS EDUCATED !!!!!"
Despite not feeling THAT educated, no one came near me after that.
But I was always to LOVE Edmund Gosse, Bib Studies, History, Philosophy and English Lit.

...more

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Jan 29, 2011 Dpdwyer rated it liked it

Shelves: biography

This book has been described as the first psychological biography. An only child, Gosse is raised in a Protestant sect, The Plymouth Bretheren, which is led by his father, a naturalist and artist. While strict, his parents dote on him, but from early on he questions their beliefs. I loved the scene when he's seven or so, after hearing the prohibition against praying to idols, he secretly puts a chair on a table and prays to it. And nothing happens. His mother, a poet, dies before he is ten. When ...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Cynthia rated it it was amazing

I loved this memoir, written by the son, who grew up in Devonshire in the latter half of the 19th century. He loved his father, a scientist who was also something of a religious fanatic, a member of the Calvinistic Plymouth Brethren. By the time he was 19, the son was through with religion, but remained on affectionate terms with his narrow-minded dad. He tells their story with honesty and humor.

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Sep 07, 2011 Lucy rated it it was amazing

Families, eh. What binds, and what divides. This is a wonderful account of the author as a solitary child, cut off from reality by a strict religion. But what makes it so enthralling for me is the picture he paints of how an intelligent child can for so long squeeze himself into the mould his parents make. It's not at all a stuffy classic, but an absolute must-read. ...more

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Dec 19, 2007 Jamie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs

This is probably my favorite book from the Victorian era.

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Sep 13, 2015 Mike rated it liked it

I had this book recommended to me by a friend; in fact, she was buying extra copies and giving them away. I can't say it had that effect on me, however.

What an odd book! Gosse was the sun of Philip Henry Gosse, who was a famous zoologist in the 19th century, around the time of Darwin. He was also a Puritan Christian, as was his wife - the mother of Edmund: she died of breast cancer when Edmund was still under ten years old. Philip married again, a few years later.

The book is supposedly the fac I had this book recommended to me by a friend; in fact, she was buying extra copies and giving them away. I can't say it had that effect on me, however.

What an odd book! Gosse was the sun of Philip Henry Gosse, who was a famous zoologist in the 19th century, around the time of Darwin. He was also a Puritan Christian, as was his wife - the mother of Edmund: she died of breast cancer when Edmund was still under ten years old. Philip married again, a few years later.

The book is supposedly the factual memoirs of Gosse as a child, and of his relationship with his father, who, according to the book, was virtually a recluse, and a very rigid Christian. (Gosse's mother was as puritanical as her husband, according to Gosse junior.) The book claims to be fact, but later biographers of both father and son have found a good deal of fiction in the writing. It's very much the view of a man who has cast his parents aside along with his religion, but in writing about it he colours the characters of his parents - his father in particular - in such a way as to make the reader recoil from them. Knowing that Gosse's writing is more biased than not is quite helpful in reading the book: you see how he shows himself as the one treated somewhat unjustly, when in fact this was apparently less than the truth. He also, perhaps unwittingly, shows himself as rather pompous and quite class conscious. Those who are lower than him in the social scale are written about in such a way as to show that Gosse despises them - it's not just what they do, it's how the author describes them. For example, in describing John Brooks, a poor man who doesn't do the right thing according to Gosse's lights: John Brooks was a heavy dirty man, with a pock-marked face and two left legs... I'm not sure how Brooks manages to have two left legs, but doesn't it immediately make you feel he's something of a monster?

I got to a point with the book where I thought I wouldn't finish it, but I did. However, Gosse lost my sympathy well before the end! ...more

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Sep 18, 2014 Laura rated it liked it

Recommended to Laura by: Bettie

Shelves: non-fiction, audio-books, victorians, e-books, gutenberg, british-literature, memoir-biography, read-2014, fiction-20th-century, christian-fiction

From BBC Radio 4 - Extra Debut:
Memoir of Edmund Gosse's Victorian childhood, raised in a strictly non-conformist Plymouth Brethren home. Stars Derek Jacobi and Roger Allam.

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

I liked this book even if I am not a big fan of christian fiction. ...more

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Dec 26, 2016 Stephanie Patterson rated it it was amazing

Edmund Gosse's father was a self-taught marine biologist and his mother, a poet and illustrator, but the center of their lives was their fundamentalist faith. They were Plymouth Brethren and were devoted to this fundamentalist Christian sect. Edmund was their only child and this is how he describes their life together: "For over three years after their marriage, neither of my parents left London for a single day, not being able to afford to travel. They received scarcely any visitors, never ate Edmund Gosse's father was a self-taught marine biologist and his mother, a poet and illustrator, but the center of their lives was their fundamentalist faith. They were Plymouth Brethren and were devoted to this fundamentalist Christian sect. Edmund was their only child and this is how he describes their life together: "For over three years after their marriage, neither of my parents left London for a single day, not being able to afford to travel. They received scarcely any visitors, never ate a meal away from home, never spent an evening in social intercourse abroad. At night they discussed theology, read aloud to one another, or translated scientific brochures from French or German. It sounds a terrible life of pressure and deprivation, and that it was physically unwholesome there can be no shadow of a doubt. But their commitment was complete and unfeigned."
Gosse, who eventually became a poet, critic and memoirist was not allowed to read fiction in this household. Fiction was made up. It was a lie and therefore a sin. This is particularly interesting as his mother enjoyed making up stories as a child and was able to hold an audience rapt as she told them. The family had little to do with people outside their religious sect and only decided to subscribe to a newspaper once England became engage in the Crimean War.
Gosse's mother died when he was 8 of breast cancer and his father remarried a woman with whom young Edmund got along very well. But a rift with his father continues to grow. When Edmund brings home a volume of poetry, his father burns it. His stepmother asks her husband's permission to introduce Edmund to Sir Walter Scott's Waverly novels No dice.
Gosse's father who found great comfort and satisfaction in his scientific work is dealt a blow when Darwin publishes "The Origin of the Species" because he cannot reconcile his literal interpretation of the Bible with Darwin's theory. He published Omphalos, a book that argued that the world was created with all it's species all at once. It was dismissed by almost everyone as a preposterous idea. Though Gosse says that this destroyed his father, indications are that his father continued to lecture and publish.
Father and Son is worth reading for Gosse's close attention to his own development (his understanding that his father was fallible, his belated delight in literature and his ability to become for lack of another phrase, "his own person.")
His literary style is somewhat formal but a pleasure to read

...more

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Nov 03, 2014 Jesse Kraai rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1900s, memoir

*I got turned on to this book when I found it on one of Nick Hornby's list of faves*

The book fails to achieve what it hoped to: to find the seeds of Gosse's later rebellion in his early youth. We spend about two-thirds of the book there, looking. Gosse keeps plodding on, expecting to find the answer himself. But we don't. We also don't get a convincing portrait of the father. How did he come to Botany, what teacher led him to that worldly path, what was the joy he found there? Gosse sr. came fro ...more

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Jan 22, 2015 Heather(Gibby) rated it liked it

A non-fiction account of Edmund Gosse's relationship with his father. Everything in Mr. Gosses's upbringing was focused on piety and service to God. As the story unfolds the young Edmund slowly begins to understand that there is more to life that worship, and that his father is not infallible. I found the section dealing with Mr. Gosse's senior addressing Charles Darwin's theories to be particularly interesting, as I have been slowly reading through The Origin of the Species concurrently to this ...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Jane Verne rated it it was amazing

Edmund Gosse's fluent writing tells this story ("Father and Son") of a father who loves his son, but harrasses and abuses his mental independence through the
pursuit of "fundamental" Christianity. The book might have been too
dark and sombre to tackle without the mixture of ordinary life and
ordinary kindness that runs through it. It has been criticised in its
time for exaggeration, even a twisting of the truth about the father,
but it seems to me to be very believable -and it has been rated as
a mast ...more

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May 01, 2014 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 501-book-list, biography

This book was fantastic and it really hit that this occurs still to this day in homes all across the world. Unfortunately religious indoctrination is a powerful force that many don't overcome like Gosse did. When someone does it often tears families apart. I also feel sad for both Gosse and his father, the younger eventually was able to think for himself and escape, the elder however remained stuck in religion even at the expense of his career. A naturalist who could not accept Darwin and Lyell. ...more

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Jun 09, 2019 Daniel Sevitt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: auto-biography

Moving and funny account of growing up in a deeply religious household in Victorian England. There is a lot of love here in among the extended prayer sessions, canceling of Christmas, adult baptisms and general denial of anything likely to entertain or give pleasure. The young Gosse writes about his father with deep affection even as he charts his drift away from faith and organized religion. First published over 100 years ago, this felt both timeless and current.

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May 31, 2011 Tony rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics

Sad, yet often very (laugh out loud) funny. A fascinating picture of Victorian Evangelical religion, that makes you ask whether modern forms of Christian believing can lead to similar inter-generational tensions. And a thought-provoking description of how inevitable rebellion against our parent(s) can still walk hand in hand with lifelong love and respect for them.

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Mar 08, 2009 Sandra rated it it was amazing

Excellent! This coming of age story under the watchful eye of a strict religious upbringing still holds up today. The author's humor and sensitivity with which he retells his parent's overbearing religious fervor and what it did to a young child's psyche, engrosses the reader. Highly recommended. ...more

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Nov 04, 2016 Justin Evans rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: essays

Beautifully written, and a wonderful document about the late nineteenth century clash between 'religion' and 'science.' Also, Gosse goes out of his way to present his father as a decent human being, not something that can be said about the other books in this tradition. ...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Feby Idrus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Well written in the Victorian manner, and a fascinating double portrait of Gosse and his Puritan scientist father.

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Nov 08, 2016 Matthew Lawrence rated it it was ok

Goodness that was dull.

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About Edmund Gosse

Edmund Gosse

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Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic, now primarily remembered for his classic memoir, Father and Son (1907), detailing his difficult childhood in a religiously fanatical home.

An important and influential critic in his day, Gosse as a critic, essayist and correspondent is still very much worth reading today.

Books by Edmund Gosse

The Life Of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1917)

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“am inclined to believe it to have been the most salutary, the most practical piece of training which my Father ever gave me. It forced me to observe sharply and clearly, to form visual impressions, to retain them in the brain, and to clothe them in punctilious and accurate language.” — 0 likes

“She was never a tower of strength to me, but at least she was always a lodge in my garden of cucumbers.” — 0 likes

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